Unlucky at love — royal weddings often end in common divorce

As glamorous and romantic as royal weddings can be, in post war Britain they've often lurched along miserably before ending in despair or scandal.

Three of Queen Elizabeth's four children, and her sister, have divorced, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

Most notably, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, who married in a lavish ceremony broadcast in July 1981, stayed married for only 15 years. Yet not long into the marriage the couple started leading separate lives under the old royal code of "don't complain, don't explain." This dragged on until the marriage was so dysfunctional the couple sought a formal end to the relationship.

And while the marital failure of the first in line to the throne would be bad news for the Queen regardless of how it ended, the tabloid rumours, affairs and airing of private, sometimes sexual, details could not have been more disastrous to the royal marriage brand than the separation of Diana and Charles in 1992.

The divorce that followed the separation, in itself, was enough to take the shine off the notion royal marriage was, and could be, an institution capable of setting a standard for society to live by. But then, adding insult to injury, was Charles's younger brother who followed up with spectacular relationship troubles of his own.

Prince Andrew's wedding to Sarah Ferguson ended after 10 years although the Duke and Duchess of York formally separated after just six years of marriage.

During the separation the British tabloids had a riotous time following "Fergie" as she cavorted with men besides her husband while the Duke was out of the country. In one famous incident, the Duchess was even photographed topless while an American business tycoon apparently sucked her toes.

The Queen's only daughter, Princess Anne, had also tarnished the idea of royal marriage when, in 1989 she announced her separation from her husband, Mark Phillips, eventually divorcing in 1992. Thankfully for the Queen, this marriage ended without the tabloid shenanigans that beset the princes.

These three royal divorces may have been the undoing of the fairy tale of royal romance but the standard by which these failed relationships were to be judged, was really set by the Queen's sister a few years earlier.

Princess Margaret seemed to be foreshadowing the future when she fell in love with an older divorced man with two children of his own. But after much controversy, she decided not to marry him and instead married a well-known photographer.

Not long into that marriage rumours of infidelity on both sides persisted until this marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1978.

Royal watchers say the string of four divorces inside the inner circle of the Royal Family from 1978 to 1996 forced it to change the manner by which royal couples would court from then on.

"By royal standards William and Kate's courtship took an incredibly long time," says Andrew Alderson, a British reporter with more than 20 years covering the Royal Family. "Normally there is a year or two together and then they get engaged and get married. But this time they are going to huge lengths to try and avoid the pitfalls that have beset other marriages."

Only the Queen's youngest son, Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, have managed to keep their marriage together since getting hitched in 1999.

Like his mother, Edward appears to be in a scandal-free marriage, the kind that was relatively commonplace for centuries in the Royal Family when stiff upper lips and suffering in dignity was a code to live by, and divorce wasn't, ever, an option.

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